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Shipboard 17&18
Ryan sat hunched over his desk in his work room. He was hopelessly unqualified to work on Embuos engines. And while Miss Salinity was nothing but kind, he could tell she noticed.
He didn’t know how he could even begin to cover the gaps in his understanding, but he had to figure it out. He’d gone back to his old engineering textbooks, they weren’t helpful, but maybe he could convince Escena he was just incompetent.
He caught an emerald green hand out of the corner of his eye, pawing at his desk, and he snatched up one of his wrenches and smacked the drone on its knuckles.
The creature snatched its hand away, and he turned, glaring. Captain Jerevine had been right about these little idiots; they were like little kids, putting anything they could get their hands on into their mouths. The only problem was, unlike human children, they could also swallow almost anything.
He'd gotten careless the other day and ended up losing a micrometer when he wasn’t looking. Which was bad enough, but it had ended up killing the dumb idiot snake.
The creature hadn't been able to digest the metal, and true to the Captain’s word, it had gotten impacted and ended up dying of constipation.
They had to be taught, not necessarily individually, what they could and couldn’t touch. The only problem was, while the male Embuos were a little smarter than human drones, you couldn’t plug a USB into a snake and download whatever program you wanted.
Instead, the Embuos had hijacked their own pain response. The males weren’t able to reason through why they shouldn’t do something; instead, they had a particularly strong aversion to pain.
They could take simple instructions and would, he was told, even act without regard for their own lives if asked, though the Embuos used machines for truly hazardous work.
“Having trouble, honeh?”
He glanced over his shoulder, smiling at Escena. “They’re learning,” he said.
She smiled back, slithering over, and laying her head on his should. “Mm, This’n loves how warm you ahe.” She gazed up at him with wide, maroon eyes. “Them boys ahe learnin’, but you ahen’t.”
He turned his head, coughing, glad the awkwardness of her statement gave him an excuse to cover his blush. “I’m sorry, I-”
“You folks ahn’t the advanced civilization ya make yerselves out to be, ahe ya?” she asked, cutting him off.
“What?” he asked. “No! we’re-” She cupped his cheek, drawing his eyes to hers.
“This’n’ll teach ya everythin’ ya need to know.”
He frowned, shaking his head. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Want,” she chuckled. “Honeh, want has nothing ta do with it.”
“What do you mean?”
She smiled at him, but it was a sad smile.
“Honeh, This’n may be smartah than these-” she glanced around, her lips curling in distaste. “Animals. But that just means she knows she’s a slave ta her biology.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, frowning.
“Honeh,” she said gently. “This’n understands you aliens think of yourself, and then everyone else. Or rathah, This’n knows, even though she can't undahstand."
She shifted, resting her arms on his legs, and propping her chin up on her hands. “This’n isn’t like you. She was born to serve and protect the breeding class, as they,” she gestured to the drones in the room, “were born to serve her. There’s no I, no self-interest; we all do better, evolutionarily, if we leave the rearing of children to the brood mothers. Every woman abord is a pseudo clone, genetic tweakin’ aside. Maybe, if we live long enough, we’ll be elevated ta brood mothers. But none of us will be mothers without a breeding male.”
She sighed, pressing her head into his chest. “So, everythin’, Everythyin’ is dedicated to those males. A single woman could bring our species back from the brink, but only if she had a male, or preferably more than one. But you, yer so much like one of them, from the middle up, anyway, that you trigger a lot of them same feelin’s.”
He swallowed, overwhelmed by everything she’d just said. It made sense, he supposed; he had been told they were eusocial.
“Escena-” She pressed a finger to his lips.
“Shush, you don’t gotta explain nuthin’. This’n’ll talk to the Captain, and we’ll get you everythin’ you’ll need.”
He nodded. “Thanks, Escena. I owe you.”
“No, ya don’t; This’n wants to, that’s all.”
She pressed cool lips to his cheek before pulling away, her tail looping around his legs and pulling his chair out. “Clean up,” she said. “This’n’ll walk ya through how the generator works. Later on, we’ll get ya the study materials ya need.”
“Right,” he said, standing and stowing his things before joining the woman.
------
Nazarene waited in her stateroom, a glass in hand. The room was quite spacious, which only made sense given her position and the ship’s size.
She needed to be able to entertain if called upon. A thankfully rare occurrence in the void of space.
She much preferred to focus on her work, not that she disliked people, but if she wanted to be a politician, she would have set herself up for a presidential run.
She sipped at her glass, the amber liquor burning the back of her throat.
There was a knock, and she stood. “Come in.”
The door opened, and a seaman pushed in a cart carrying the night’s meal, Captain Perkins following him in.
The men saluted, and she returned the gesture sitting back down and gesturing for the Captain to join her as they were served.
He took the place opposite her, nodding to the man. “Dismissed."
The seaman saluted and trotted out of the room, leaving them alone.
The Captian sighed, settling back into his seat. “Alright, Ma’am, what did we need to talk about?”
She pursed her lips, raising her glass to the man. “Drink, Captain?”
“Thank you, Ma’am, but I need to return to my station after the night’s meal.”
She nodded, finishing her glass and going to refill it. “You received my orders, of course.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Perkins said. “Back to dock for retrofit. I understand we’re replacing the generators with the new aneutronic reactors. I know they’re smaller, but I’m concerned about the tonnage, Ma’am. Your orders indicated we were to more than double the number. The ship’s ion drives barely have the thrust as it is.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Nazarene said, sitting. “The Whitehouse decided this was above your paygrade, but you’ll need to know eventually anyway. We’ve recently obtained the technical specifications for Wexiks FTL and impulse drives. We’ll be replacing our existing drives as well.”
Perkins was silent, thinking. “I don’t understand,” he said at last. “Why this ship, all of a sudden? Shouldn’t we be building more vessels?”
“Captain, there are talks in progress to station this vessel in Wexis space; we need to have the Liberty’s Voice ready by the time an agreement is reached.”
The Captain shook his head. “Ma’am, this project will take a decade, two.”
“We have a matter of years, and we must make it happen,” she said. “We’ll have all the resources Earth can muster, and I’ll need your cooperation.”
“You’ll have it, Ma’am, of course,” Perkins said.
She drank, shaking her head. “It will be a feat, but man has risen to steeper challenges. We’ll muddle through.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the man said, nodding. “Thank you for confiding in me, Ma’am. You didn’t have to.”
“I know, I wanted to. Keep it in your hat.”
